Over time, teeth can darken or yellow due to staining from food and drinks in our diet. Coffee, tea, and red wine are especially staining and can dull or yellow your teeth over the years. Daily brushing and flossing along with routine professional dental cleanings keep your teeth and gums healthy, but sometimes whitening is needed to enhance your smile and provide a brighter more youthful appearance. We offer several teeth whitening (also known as teeth bleaching) options that can help lighten your teeth and give you a brighter, whiter smile.
Take Home Teeth Whitening
We offer two types of take home teeth whitening options at our office: stock trays and custom trays. Our stock trays come with prefilled whitening trays to brighten your smile one to two shades and are easy to use. You only need to wear the trays 15-30 minutes per day and come in a ten pack. If you are looking to really enhance your smile or have teeth that are more difficult to whiten, we can fabricate custom trays and provide you with a stronger prescription strength whitening gel. These trays fit perfectly to your teeth and you apply the prescription whitening gel at home and wear them over night or for 30-60 minutes during the day depending on the strength of gel. A small amount of gel is placed in the trays and the whitening process happens in the comfort of your own home. Once the custom trays are made, you can reuse them in the future if you need to re-whiten in a few years. Studies show custom trays worn at home with prescription whitening gel tend to provide the best result for whiter teeth.
In-Office Teeth Whitening
For those of who prefer a more immediate result without the need to wear trays at home, we offer in-office whitening as an option. During this procedure, we apply prescription strength whitening gel and supervise while the whitening takes effect. In-office whitening at our office usually takes two 60 minute sessions to achieve the desired result.
Do you have sensitive teeth? Whitening can increase the sensitivity of your teeth temporarily, but we have options to avoid sensitivity. Let us know if your teeth are normally sensitive so we can recommend the best whitening option for you. Call or email our West Seattle office today if you would like more info on our teeth whitening options.